


and i'll find strength in pain

by argenttmccall



Series: BlueLight [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Spencer Reid, Case Fic, Dean Winchester Mentioned, Demons, Gen, POV Spencer Reid, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17504609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argenttmccall/pseuds/argenttmccall
Summary: It was supposed to be a normal, straightforward case.Well, in their case, ‘normal and straightforward’ usually meant a trail of broken and bloody victims. Add in a town with a population approximately the size of Spencer’s high school graduating class, and an overwhelmed sheriff’s office, and you get the BAU on your doorstep.orthe BAU stumbles upon a case that is more than what it seems, and Hotch and Morgan have their eyes opened to a whole new world. lucky for them, Reid has some experience in that department.





	and i'll find strength in pain

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place before either the spn or cm pilots. also, i'm currently re-watching spn (i'm on 1.02), but it's been a while since I've seen a demon episode so forgive me if the description isn't entirely within canon.

It was supposed to be a normal, straightforward case.

Well, in their case, ‘normal and straightforward’ usually meant a trail of broken and bloody victims. Add in a town with a population approximately the size of Spencer’s high school graduating class, and an overwhelmed sheriff’s office, and you get the BAU on your doorstep.

Four victims, two male and two female, each extensively tortured over the course of 24 hours. Absolutely nothing in common; all were different ages, races, physical characteristics, personalities, careers, etc. Victimology was all over the map, which meant that they couldn’t predict who would be the next target.

Likewise, they were at a dead end with possible suspects. DNA evidence kept coming back inconclusive, which infuriated everyone to no end. It wasn’t that the killer was covering his tracks or cleaning up the crime scenes; it was that for some reason, CODIS couldn’t make heads or tails of any of the biological evidence at the scenes or on the bodies. They couldn’t even tell if the killer was male or female.

The only other thing that stood out amidst all of the other weirdness, was the residue left on the victim’s bodies. A yellow, fine dust, which the lab analyzed and concluded was sulfur.

In retrospect, Spencer figures he should have realized what they were dealing with the moment he read that report. But in all honesty, he hadn’t. It just never occurred to him that they would be dealing with...well.

Morgan is the one who asks to revisit the crime scene of where the first victim was found. He figures they might see something that local PD missed the first time around. Hotch agrees to go with him; Spencer decides to tag along as well. He can feel a headache coming on from staring at piles and piles of paperwork and getting nothing from it. Some fresh air and a change of scenery might help, after all.

They pull up to the crime scene as the sun is setting, the police tape fluttering listlessly in the breeze. The first victim had been discovered in an abandoned junkyard, located just outside of town. It was the perfect place for the UnSub; the property was large and it was remote enough that no one in town would have heard the screams.

Spencer steps out of the SUV and almost immediately feels a chill go down his spine, and he finally begins to suspect that something is seriously wrong. He knows this feeling intimately, but he just can’t quite place from where. But before he can think about it, he spots Morgan and Hotch ahead of him walking onto the property, and Spencer hurries after them.

Morgan is frowning intently at everything around them, and Spencer throws him a questioning glance. “This place just gives me the creeps,” Morgan mutters, and Spencer agrees. Piles of ruined cars tower all around them, the fading light giving them a cold and menacing feel.

Spencer can’t help but keep his hand close by his gun, just in case. For a fleeting second he thinks he’s being paranoid, but then spots Hotch doing the same thing. Still, they don’t find much that hasn’t already been documented. There’s nothing that would help them get into the UnSub’s head, much to their frustrations.

“Let’s just head back to the motel,” Hotch says with a tired sigh. “We’ve done all we can here. I hate to say this, but...short of another body, we have nothing.”

“How about three?” comes a voice from behind them, and they whirl around in unison, guns drawn.

He’s short, and slight, Spencer notices. Completely unremarkable features; he stands casually, as if he were just having a friendly chat with them with no guns pointed at him. But most importantly, he’s unarmed.

“You work at the local pharmacy,” Hotch says, and it clicks for Spencer. The local PD had interviewed him as a potential witness, before the BAU had been called in. Again, an unremarkable interview; he hadn’t given them any leads or new information.

“Why?” Derek asks, and the man grins lazily at him. “Why these people, why the torture?”

“Because it’s fun, of course,” the man says, and his grin takes on a sharper edge. “Just like it’ll be fun to spill your entrails out onto the ground.”

“You’re unarmed, and outnumbered. Put your hands on your head and get down on your knees,” Hotch orders, and the man tuts at him and shakes his head.

Meanwhile, Spencer’s been sniffing the air. It smells terrible now, where it hadn’t a few minutes ago. Like rotten eggs, like... _sulfur_.

_Oh fuck._ Spencer’s starting to put the pieces together, but he’s too late, because if he’s right…

“ _Christo_ ,” Spencer says suddenly, and the man winces. And they watch as the man’s eyes flicker and turn into a pure, inky black.

“What the fuck,” Morgan breathes, and Spencer breaks out into a cold sweat.

The man blinks in surprise, before turning a surprised, delighted grin straight onto Spencer. “You know, I can usually spot a Hunter a mile away. I _definitely_ wouldn’t have guessed you were one. You just made my night, Hunters are my favorite toy.”

“ _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas…_ ” Spencer launches into the Rituale Romanum as fast as he possibly can, but it’s no use. Even as the man, the _demon_ , starts to scream, he reaches out a hand and Spencer finds himself being levitated several feet into the air and his throat being slowly crushed.

“Reid!” Morgan yells, trying and failing to grab him and pull him down, as Hotch empties his clip into the demon. It doesn’t affect him, of course. Spencer is gasping for breath and his vision is starting to go gray. He can’t complete the Rituale.

“H-hit him,” Spencer rasps at Morgan and Hotch.

“What?!”

“With iron. Hit him w-with iron. T-trust me,” Spencer gasps, before he grays out.

* * *

The next time he regains full consciousness, he’s being shoved into what looks like a shed by Morgan, Hotch at his heels with a bloody tire iron clutched in his hands. They slam the door, muttering to each other about what to barricade it with.

“We need salt,” Spencer says with a groan, and the other two turn sharply to look at him.

“What—,” Morgan starts but is interrupted by Hotch.

“How much?”

“As much as you can get your hands on.”

They manage to find rock salt, and he directs Hotch and Morgan to carefully line the entry and any windows, ignoring his aching throat.

“This will keep it out, but it’s only temporary,” Spencer warns. “We need to neutralize the threat before the others realize we’re missing and come looking for us.”

“Are you insane?” Morgan hisses at him. “We need backup!”

“If anyone else comes here, they’ll be killed,” Spencer says flatly. “You saw what it did to me. That’s only a _fraction_ of what it can do.”

Morgan goes pale, but doesn’t argue anymore. Hotch’s jaw tightens, but otherwise he looks as unflappable as ever.

“What do we do?” Hotch asks Spencer.

Spencer huffs out a frustrated breath. Automatically, he checks his phone for a signal, and sees nothing. He could really use Dean’s voice in his ear right about now.

“We need to set a trap, so that I can finish the exorcism. Is there any paint here?”

They find paint, and Spencer gets to work. He’s only seen the Devil’s Trap once, but that was all he needed. Hotch and Morgan watch him work with wide eyes, but they stay out of his way. Spencer can’t think about them now, about what they must be thinking. Right now, he’s too focused on saving their lives.

“When I give you the signal, I want you to break the salt line,” Spencer says, and Morgan’s jaw drops.

“You want to let that thing in here with us?!”

“What I want is for you to _trust me,_ ” Spencer snaps at him. Morgan is speechless, for a second, before he nods quietly. Spencer’s eyes flicker to Hotch, who nods as well.

“Alright then. Go ahead,” Spencer says to Hotch.

“Give him hell, Reid,” Hotch says determinedly, before breaking the salt line in front of the door.

Immediately, the door bangs open and the demon strides in; it’s instantly apparent that his vessel isn’t going to last much longer. He’s bleeding profusely, and Spencer can see the burns on his vessel’s body where Hotch had landed his hits with the tire iron.

“You look like shit,” Spencer says with a cocky bravado that he doesn’t feel at all. He just hopes the demon is mad enough to take his bait.

“Oh, believe me, you’re gonna look worse when I’m through with you,” the demon snarls. “I’m gonna take your fucking pathetic meatsuit and carve up your friends here first with your own hands. Then, I’m gonna drag the three of you back down to Hell and string you up on the racks. And then we’ll see who’s the first to break.”

Spencer spreads his arms out wide. “Then come and get me.”

With a howl, the demon erupts out of the vessel he’s in, a mass of swirling black smoke violently twisting in the air. Spencer barely hears Hotch and Morgan’s shouts at the display, forcing himself to stand still and wait for the demon to make its move. The black smoke stills for a moment, before taking aim and shooting directly for Spencer.

Spencer barely blinks when the black smoke swirls around him, trying to find its way into him and failing. With a racing heart, he steps slowly away from the black smoke and out of the Devil’s Trap. The black smoke swirls angrily in the air, but stays put within the Trap’s parameters, and Spencer finally breathes a sigh of relief. This time, when he goes through the Rituale Romanum, he completes it. They hear an unholy shriek as the demon gets sent back to Hell, and then...silence.

* * *

It takes almost two weeks for Hotch and Morgan to finally corner Spencer.

They’re at Quantico, and it’s late. Spencer has his head bent over a case file, so intent on reading through the reports that he doesn’t notice the two men around him until he feels a tap on his shoulder. He looks up and blinks at them.

“If you’re looking for my report on the Miami case, I left it on your desk about a half hour ago,” Spencer says to Hotch.

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Hotch says, and then falls silent. Morgan looks just as uncomfortable, and it takes a minute before Spencer realizes.

“Oh,” Spencer says. He shuts the case file and casts a look around them. They’re alone in the bullpen; everyone else has long gone home. “You may as well sit down, if we’re doing this now.”

Hotch sighs, but pulls over a chair from another desk, while Morgan perches on the edge of the desk across from Reid’s. Morgan scrubs a hand over his face, and Spencer notices for the first time the dark circles under his eyes, and feels a pang of guilt.

“You didn’t tell me you were having nightmares,” Spencer says quietly, and Morgan sighs in frustration.

“And you’re telling me you don’t?”

Spencer shrugs. “I have enough nightmares doing this job.”

They fall silent again, and Spencer fidgets uncomfortably. He remembers having this conversation with Dean, but under drastically different circumstances.

Finally, Spencer sighs. “What do you want to know?”

“What was that thing?”

“A demon,” Spencer says, and both Hotch and Morgan wince. “You...may not want to believe it, but it’s true.”

Morgan chuckles humorlessly. “Kid, I don’t think we have any other choice but to believe.”

“You...knew,” Hotch says slowly. “You knew what it was, and what to do. How?”

“Demons leave sulfur residue wherever they go. He was unarmed, and yet was completely confident that he could kill us where we stood. I made the connections and guessed. And I was right.”

“The thing with its eyes, did you make it do that?”

“Yes. Invoking God’s name usually has that effect.”

Morgan blows out a heavy breath. “But how did _you_ know what to do? You’ve seen this thing before?”

Spencer doesn’t immediately answer, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes tiredly. He doesn’t like remembering this, but it needs to be done.

“When I was sixteen, I was attacked by a vampire,” Spencer finally says, and Hotch sucks in a sharp breath while Morgan’s jaw drops.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Wish I were. And I would have been killed if...I hadn’t been saved,” Spencer says with a sigh, unable to stop a small, soft smile at the thought of 19 year old Dean Winchester, armed with nothing but arrogance and a machete.

“That... _demon_ ,” Morgan says with a shudder. “He called you a hunter?”

“Yeah. I’m not a Hunter, at least not in the sense that he meant. Hunters, they essentially do the same job that we do. But instead of hunting murderers, they hunt supernatural creatures. I was saved by a couple of Hunters, and I eventually became friends with them.”

Well, really, he became friends with Dean. John Winchester was another entity entirely, but at least he was willing to tolerate Spencer’s presence every once in a while.

“And that’s how you know about this stuff? You learned it from them?”

“Yeah. I’ve been on a couple of hunts, but minor ones, just to see what they were like.”

“Do I want to know?” Hotch asks warily, and Spencer shrugs at him.

“Ghosts.”

“Jesus Christ,” Morgan sighs, as Hotch just blinks at Spencer. “And this is the first time you’ve seen something... _supernatural_ on our cases?”

“To my knowledge, yes.”

“That’s something, at least,” Morgan mutters, and Spencer throws him a sympathetic glance. They’re taking this pretty well, all things considering. It’s not easy to find your entire worldview blown wide open with the existence of the most terrifying creatures on Earth.

“So, how many Hunters are there?” Hotch asks curiously.

“I have no idea. They don’t tend to keep track of each other, unless they run into each other during hunts. Otherwise, they just...roam around, looking for the next creature to kill.”

“Sounds lonely,” Hotch says quietly, and Spencer sighs.

“It is. They’re doing a job that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, and usually it’s because they’ve been personally affected by the supernatural in some way.”

“So...your friend…?”

“His mother was killed by _something_ ,” Spencer says. “He’s still looking for it to this day.”

They fall silent, seemingly having run out of steam and questions. Spencer knows that as time goes on, they’ll think of more questions, and he’ll do his best to answer. He made his peace with the supernatural a long time ago, but it helped immensely to have Dean there to answer any questions he had.

Hotch and Morgan get up to take their leave, and Spencer takes that as his cue to pack up his stuff and head home.

The three of them are in the elevator heading down, each quiet in a contemplative silence, when Morgan suddenly turns to Spencer.

“Hey, one last question. That night...you basically dared that demon to possess you, right? How’d you know it wouldn’t?”

“It’s not that it wouldn’t, it’s that it _couldn’t_ ,” Spencer says with a wry grin. He drops his hands to lift up his shirt and tug the waistband of his pants just low enough for the other two to see the tattoo on his hip. “It’s called an anti-possession tattoo.”

Morgan whistles lowly. “I’m not gonna lie, that’s pretty badass, Reid.”

Spencer huffs a small laugh as Hotch shakes his head with a small smile on his lips.

“We never actually got a chance to thank you,” Hotch says to Spencer as they step out of the elevator. Spencer looks at them in surprise. “If you hadn’t decided to come with us, we’d be dead.”

“I…,” Spencer trails off, unsure of what to say. “You’re welcome?”

Morgan just chuckles and pats Spencer on the shoulder. “Good night, Reid.”

Hotch murmurs his goodbye as well, and the two men head off, leaving Spencer to look after them bemusedly. He pulls his phone out of his bag; he figures he’ll give Dean a call, just to check in. It’s been a while, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for all of the love and support, it means the world! drop a comment, let me know what you think, or hit me up on my tumblr!  
>  
> 
> [argenttmccall.tumblr.com](https://argenttmccall.tumblr.com)


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